Community
defends City Councilor Chuck Turner

By
Frank Neisser
InternationalAction Center, Boston

Nov
3, 2010

On Oct. 29 a predominantly
white and suburban federal jury falsely found
African-American Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner
guilty of one count of attempted extortion and three
counts of lying to the FBI.

Chuck Turner at Oct. 30 rally
in Roxbury, Mass.

photo:
Steve Kirschbaum

The case was based on an
undercover sting operation and a cooperating witness who
had passed bribes for years, and who himself declared
Turner to be innocent in interviews in the Boston Globe.
The witness condemned the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s
office, saying he thought they were conducting a
corruption investigation, but that he had been used to
bring down two strong progressive African-American
politicians, Turner and State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson,
while no one else was touched. He only testified against
Turner under threat of being jailed for contempt of
court if he didn’t.

This guilty verdict is a
reflection of an alarming, expanding racist conspiracy
to oust African-American elected officials by demonizing
them in congressional hearings or in the courts with
various charges of ethics violations, especially
corruption. In reality, these officials are singled out
for who they are, for the disenfranchised communities
they represent and in some instances, like Turner’s, for
their radical politics.

More than 200 community
residents, activists and supporters expressed their
total solidarity with Turner at a rally in front of his
district office in Roxbury on Oct. 30, saying, “We stand
with Chuck Turner! Say no to FBI/U.S. racist frame-up!
Chuck is innocent! U.S. government guilty! The verdict
is the crime!” Roxbury is a predominantly Black
community in Boston.

The jury never got to hear
from more than 80 witnesses who were prepared to testify
to Turner’s selfless service to the community, asking
nothing for himself.

For every day of the
councilor’s two-week-long trial his supporters packed
the court room, forcing the U.S. District Court to
provide a second courtroom for the overflow. Beginning
with Turner’s arrest two years ago the community has
understood this attack to be a political one on the
entire African-American community and its right of
self-determination to choose its own leaders.

Supporters poured out by the
hundreds in rally after rally. Former U.S. Attorney
General Ramsey Clark, founder of the International
Action Center, came to Boston on Dec. 17 and stood next
to Turner and condemned the nationwide pattern by the
U.S. Attorney’s offices and the FBI of going after
elected officials of color and progressive officials to
remove them from office based on a political agenda.

An online petition demanding
all the politically motivated prosecutions of
progressive politicians and politicians of color be
dropped and that the prosecutors be prosecuted has
generated over 35,000 e-mail messages to Obama
administration officials and congressional leaders.
Support for Turner could not have been clearer than in
the 2009 City Council race, in which he won re-election
with more than 60 percent of the vote.

Strongly refusing to
compromise his politics

At the Oct. 30 rally, Turner
began the program by thanking his supporters and saying
it was their support that gave him strength and serenity
from the beginning.

Turner specifically recognized
the Boston Workers Alliance and the Boston School Bus
Union as being the core of his support throughout. He
spoke from the School Bus Union sound truck, which had
led many motorcades through the community in support of
him.

Turner blamed U.S. Attorney
Michael Sullivan and the FBI for his frame-up. He
expressed his excitement at the progress the
African-American community has made in electing more
people of color to at-large positions on the City
Council. He spoke of having organized all of his life
for the liberation of African-American people. He spoke
of the corruption of a system that was built by unpaid
slave labor in both the North and the South, and cited
the fact that the prison industrial complex is the
fastest growing industry in today’s economy.

Turner invoked Shay’s
Rebellion against bankers’ control of the U.S.
government in the late 1700s, saying that the U.S.
Constitution has been illegal from the start and
protects only the rich and the banks. He called for a
new people’s movement to build economic democracy for
working people of all races and backgrounds. The crowd
was also addressed by Minister Rodney X of the Nation of
Islam and by longtime African-American City Councilor
Charles Yancey.

Yancey called Turner “our
leader” and equated the FBI attack on him to earlier FBI
attacks on W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X and Martin Luther
King. Cultural expressions of solidarity were provided
by The Foundation and Gabrilla Ballard.

Love and support for Turner
runs so deep in the Roxbury community that the Boston
Globe was forced to cover the rally with a picture and a
full account showing the depth of community support for
him. The Globe also printed a separate article
interviewing person after person from the community
saying they knew the councilor to be a selfless
dedicated servant of the people, who, alone among city
councilors, has maintained a district office in the
heart of Roxbury, paying the expenses out of his own
pocket.

But the agenda of the real,
racist rulers of the Boston establishment could be seen
in the Boston Globe Oct. 30 editorial on the verdict. It
revealed what they revile him for — that he dares to
speak truth to power, pointing the finger at the Boston
Police chief for the crimes of the police in the
community, daring to say that U.S. soldiers had been
guilty of the rape of Iraqi women, and telling his
constituents the truth that the corporate rulers don’t
want them to hear.

Turner’s supporters are
determined to conduct a broad and tireless campaign to
see that he not spend a single day in jail. Turner is
urging supporters to write letters to Federal District
Judge Douglas P. Woodlock asking that he be put on
probation rather than spend time in jail, so that he can
continue his work as a city councilor. These letters
should be sent to City Councilor Chuck Turner, Boston
City Hall, One City Hall Square, Boston MA 02201.

He is also asking supporters
to write to Boston City Council President Michael Ross
and the members of the Boston City Council at the same
address, and ask them to delay any vote on Turner’s
continued tenure on the Boston City Council until after
he is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 25. Further
information can be found at supportchuckturner.com.

The International Action Center (IAC) was launched in 1992
by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and many
others who had worked together against the Gulf War.

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